Life, I find, is much like my orchids: I was given them as gifts, and they bloom despite (in spite of?)  my cat. I’ve tended my various plants; watering, feeding, shifting them around to the ‘best’ spots … and they bloom … mostof them anyway.  It’s a complicated affair, this life, this ‘gift’ we are given. There are, of course, guidebooks, to advise us about what to eat and when, what to refrain from eating, the best places to be.  And there are the otherguidebooks: our religious texts, that tell us what we need to feed our souls, what to withhold, our place in this world (and the next).  We have come to believe we can do it all by ourselves: after all, we have The Guidebook, if we just follow that!  But as I look around, it seems to me all these ‘guidebooks’ have failed us.  Despite (in spite of) them, all those mischievous ‘cats’ of hunger, poverty, mistrust and war are still madly nipping at our ankles!  But we love our cats, don’t we?   The answer, I think, lies somewhere in the all of it?  I’d like to talk with you about it…